


The Grand Optimist

by Feltstars



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Burnish related minor body horror, Burnish reunion, Gueira PoV, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, M/M, Mad Burnish (Promare), Suicidal Thoughts, i needed this so bad, rated m to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feltstars/pseuds/Feltstars
Summary: He felt nothing, somehow, when it was all over. He didn’t feel the globs of involuntary tears rolling down his face or the tips of his fingers that floated in scorching flecks of gray. The cries of his people found his ears with little meaning in the moment, and the beating of his heart was nothing more than static filling his traumatized psyche.When the creaking of the still sliding Parnassus jolted his barred body in its pod,  he had the epiphany that it was, in fact, his heart in his ears.Why hadn’t it killed him?_*_*_*_*_“It’s good to be alive, at the end of it all. Isn’t it?”(Or, what happened when Gueira was saved from his Parnassus pod.)
Relationships: Gueira/Meis (Promare), Lio Fotia & Gueira & Meis
Comments: 15
Kudos: 79





	The Grand Optimist

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I wanted written so bad so I took it upon myself. Ta da!
> 
> Minor body horror, very happy ending, life is good.
> 
> Not beta'd! 
> 
> Pleeeeeease enjoy, I love love feedback of any kind!!

As many times as Gueira wished for death, everytime he got close to it he bolted as far away from it as humanly possible. 

It would graze its disgusting, boney fingers on his already roughed out skin and he would screech so loudly that nobody could hear him as it lay pressure on his frail throat. Fight until he had not a drop of power left in his system then keep going, and repeat the very next day. He’d find himself creeping onto whatever mattress was available next to his just as beaten boyfriend, not before passing a nudge to his Boss, knowing mutually that spoken comfort was a false prophet. 

And then, after running from the hands of mortality till the ground beneath him turned to rubble, he’d lie under the broken roof that let the undisrupted night sky leak in, and beg, _so desperately_ , to die.

_*_*_*_*_

He felt nothing, somehow, when it was all over. He didn’t feel the globs of involuntary tears rolling down his face or the tips of his fingers that floated in scorching flecks of gray. The cries of his people found his ears with little meaning in the moment, and the beating of his heart was nothing more than static filling his traumatized psyche. 

When the creaking of the still sliding Parnassus jolted his barred body in its pod, he had the epiphany that it was, in fact, his heart in his ears.

Why hadn’t it killed him?

Blinking his drying eyes, he began to acquaint the gruesome uncertainty that flooded his chest. Was everyone outside okay? Did the world meet its untimely fate before Boss and the firefighter could fix it? 

Bile started making its appearance in his throat as it dawned on him that only time would tell. He’d be forced to let the binds bore deeper into his bruising wrists and either have Boss, or someone, or anyone save him, or be kept here while the world burns around him along with everything he knew.

Then again, he wasn’t sure he had the luxury of saying he knew anything at all. Never really did.

And there it was again, the hope that maybe he’d starve as the world ignited so that he’d waste away while the magma, deadly for anyone else, lulled him into a state that could finally guarantee some sort of peace. And he’d see Lio there, and Meis. And they’d be granted some sort of happiness he knew they were just never meant to experience.

Meis.

_Meis._

**“ME-”** The lack of saliva in his mouth and the exhaustion racking his entire body scraped his voice against his chest.

 **“MEIS!”** He finally screamed, hoping desperately to be heard in the sea of crying Burnish. He was blessed in the most twisted way to have been locked up adjacent to his partner, aware of his presence but completely unable to rectify that closeness. He took his partner’s hands for granted.

Every second void of Mei’s voice added more weight to his failing legs. His voice was raw in his every plea, hoping to hear that one familiar voice, but to no avail.

 **“Meis! Meis, I’m alive! Meis!”** The complete lack of feeling in his body took a full 180 in the matter of seconds, his chest heaving with an anxiety he always knew he’d feel one day, just not so incredibly soon. “Meis! Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Meis! Answer me! Answer me, asshole! Fucking answer me!”

Nothing.

“Meis?” He yelled once more, weaker, sucking in a wobbly sob as he gave to the ties around him and no longer holding himself with them. 

“Meis,” he whimpered, vision warped and blurry from the fresh stream of tears making its way to the silvered and dirty ground beneath him. 

Nothing.

_*_*_*_*_

By the time the rescue teams had made their appearance, he’d come to terms with his boyfriend’s death. That’s not to say he hadn’t spoken to him; he didn’t know how long he had been running his mouth when the rescue operations finally took hold, starting from the bottom and working their way up. He lost count of the apologies and the broken wishes he had granted the man hidden by the wall dividing them, he just hoped somewhere that he was listening even if that was a little too optimistic. He told him that, if everything worked out and the Mad Burnish prevailed in all they ever said they would, he was going to marry him. They were going to get a shit apartment from their minimum wage jobs, and then Meis would get to go to school like he dreamed of before the world went to crap. They’d get loans, but he’d pay it off with his shiny new job and then they’d get to have a baby running around, and maybe it’d look like him, or himself, or they could adopt. If he kept talking about it, maybe he could convince himself the possibility still existed.

He just wanted to see him. He gave every ultimatum he could to whatever power controlled it, bargaining to a non tangible being that when they finally removed him, they were removing _him_ and not a ghostly heap of ash. 

Even if that was a little too optimistic.

_*_*_*_*_

They got to Meis first.

It was a different squad than he was used to, Burnish Rescue Squad 4, from a part of the city they didn’t reach much. Different squads were stationed across the Parnassus walls, using the systems from their fire trucks and the extra help from their Rescue Pilots to carry people from the highest peaks. 

They tried not to look him in the eye much as they worked to open the pods which, to the horrified expectation masked upon the firefighters faces, were not meant to be opened. 

One firefighter, a young girl with a blonde pixie cut and a face covered in freckles, spoke up first. She leaned her head from the window of the plane she manned, squinting in the dim light. He eyed her carefully as she hesitantly reached for the comm mechanism on her dashboard, her gaze never leaving the pod that would have held Meis. 

“Captain,” her voice would have been steele had it not wavered like it did.

“Tell the medics to bring a stretcher to Quadrant 3 row 42 immediately. Unconscious male. He’s got a pulse but his breathing is shallow.” Sweat billowed from the faces of her coworkers, hacking axes to break the bolts closing them in. “He’s missing his right arm from the shoulder down,” she croaked.

He thought he was going to pass out, too.

Rustling and voices buzzed through the speaker. “Ashes? Or…”

She sighed. “Ashes.”

Another pause. “It wanted to kill him but he just didn’t let it, huh,” a raspy voice chirped from the comm. Gueira almost laughed, wetly.

Ash plumed from the pod at the breaking of the bulletproof glass opening, and she visibly shuddered. 

“Looks like it,” she whispered, wiping her forehead.

He was alive.

He was missing an arm, apparently, but he was alive. 

“That-” he craned his head from the binds, reaching for a hopeful glimpse of the limp man yet to be carried into the vehicle. “That’s my boyfriend. That’s my- you need to let me out with him. Right now.” He shook like a small dog.

She finally looked at Gueira as they carried Meis with intense scrutiny into the back entrance, sending his brain into a new circuit of hysterics. They weren’t playing- where his arm once was remained a sorry stump still producing flankers, ascending into the atmosphere around them. His stomach rose and fell, however, and that was enough for him.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir, we are only authorized to take one person at a time and he’s critically injured,” she said plainly, knowing full well she must have repeated the same sentence thousands of times prior.

“No, no, you _have_ to!” He thrashed as if any force he had left would be enough to finally pull himself free, thinking for any loose ended excuse he could muster to be let out _now_. “I don’t give a flying _fuck_ about whatever you’re authorized, I’m Lio Fotia’s general, and so is he, and you’re going to let me out now. He needs to know we’re alive.”

She went to open her mouth but opted to drag an exasperated hand over her face.

“Captain. Alert the leader we got em’.” She turned a calculated eye to him, her persona now indescribable.

“We’ll get you down as soon as possible. Meis?”

His throat closes at the sound of his name. 

“G-Gueira. Um. That,” he gestured with his head, hair bobbing with him. “Is Meis.”

She watches as her teammates load up.

“Gueira. It was, uh. Pretty admirable what you guys did.” Shame was cut deep into her face as she struggled to truly see him at face level.

“What? I didn’t- Boss- Lio and that firefighter with the insane hair-”

“You know what you did.”

“No, I-I don’t know what I did, I’d appreciate it if-.”

They started their descent to the floor of the starship, and just before he had lost sight of them to the pod around him, he heard her muster the first one out of many.

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know until much, much later, that the apology had nothing to do with her hasty departure.

_*_*_*_*_

He sat rubbing his wrists in the passenger seat of Squad 3’s plane next to the pink haired girl. “Aina”, she said her name was. She’d briefly mentioned that it was a guy from her squad that had been with Lio in which he had told her he knew all about him. She didn’t know how to respond to that.

“So. No more Burnish,” she mumbled, trying to force conversation from its shell as they fell.

He wasn’t exactly interested in talking to her. “Like shit.”

She scowled. “Not that you can control it.”

“And why wouldn’t I? It’s nobody’s decision to make but Boss’s.”

She stared at him a moment, scanning his features as she stalled the plane mid flight.

“Gueira… do you have… even a _sliver_ of understanding about what has just happened?”

He slowly shook his head.

“Nobody in the other squad thought to tell you? Hm.” She fiddles with one of her suspenders with a free hand. “Sounds about right.”

He blinked. “Well? What did I miss?”

She mustered an anxious breath. “When I say there are no more Burnish, I mean… I mean, you- aren’t one. I’m not talking about your gang, or anything,” she flails her hands. “You can still have that if you want, I guess. But you can’t, you know. Commit… arson. Anymore.”  
She had to be lying- or so he thought, but his deepest concerns were confirmed at the realization his calls weren’t being answered and his emptiness had a new explanation. The voices in his head were quiet. They were quiet, and everything else wasn’t- the world was too fucking loud. 

“Really I think you should be hearing this from Lio, I don’t- I don’t know how to respectfully tell you the rest.” She switched the mechanism into drive once more, allowing them to move further down the wall.

He wanted to object but opted to hug himself tight as he tried to tame his ever evident trembling. “At least you’re honest.”

His stomach somersaulted as they came to a sudden cease feet above the ground before pressing slowly to a stop.

“Now, Lio is a little beaten up and you’re not much better, so you might wan- Hey! _Gueira!?_

He’d fallen three feet before refusing to slam the door behind him, nearly tripping on his face when the initial impact betrayed him and his near useless legs.

His head whipped in every direction, searching rabidly for the man with the opalescent blonde hair. “Boss!?”

A sea of medics met him who he shooed off, pushing through them as they prodded at his arms and wrists and shoulders.

“Get off- Boss! I’m here!” He just needed to see someone familiar. He needed it. He was going to implode and they would have to wipe him away if they didn’t get him to the one person who brought him any form of certainty, made mistakes, but could almost always guarantee him safety, in the end. The one who showed time and time again he’d die for his sorry ass before he did anything for himself.

“Boss! Can You hear me?! It’s-”

And then there he was.

He was back onto him, skin so pale it might as well have been glowing with red, spindly scars wiring itself up his tiny frame. He stood talking with Burnish upon Burnish, thanking him and asking about the whereabouts of their loved ones. And, even after all he had been through, he was tall in his short stupor.

And there was that firefighter. He was just as shirtless, a large hand clasping the smaller man’s shoulder. It was the loud, obnoxious one that was going to persecute Thyma then ask to save her. The one that brought his Boss back from his only point of weakness through an act he thought a regular human would never reach to perform for a Burnish.

That firefighter- Galo, or something like that- who was gazing a little too lovingly at his Boss, had done a swift double take, letting his eyes wander. It was then that he locked eyes with him, quickly studying his complexion, fitting the puzzle pieces together. 

He poked his Boss with a gloved finger, beckoning him to turn around.

He’d never seen Lio run so fast in his life.

_*_*_*_*_

“So,” Lio piped up, sitting wide legged in a hospital chair as Gueira raked his hands gently through his boyfriend’s hair. He’d crawled in next to him against the nurses orders as he waited for him to rise back into consciousness, pressing his hands against his frigid face and panicking until Lio had assured him that was the new normal. He wasn’t sure if he was okay with it yet, but he also wasn’t sure he had much of a choice. His eyes were lidded; wandering hazily and the room. He’d try to push a word from his lips every now and then only for Gueira to nod and agree and tell him to go back to sleep, which he did with little protest.

“That’s everything.” 

Gueira nodded thoughtfully, processing the overflow of information finally fed to him.

He really wasn’t Burnish anymore. And the flames never really were flames, just sentient beings from another dimension taking host in his vessel. You know, Normal stuff.

The reason they were cut up and dissected all that time was a backhanded attempt at a selfish way to save the population, and he wanted to say he wasn’t bitter in learning what he had suspected all along: life would be better off if the Burnish had been made to Burn freely. Burn completely.

“I just,” he swallows.

“Do you ever think about what could have been avoided?”

Lio ponders that for a moment, sitting back.

“There’s no good in wondering that, Gueira. Kray’s eating dirt now. We’re free for the most part.”

He turned to Meis, who’s right side was bandaged tightly. He knew he’d eat his words when the trauma kept him up at night, but he took to celebrating every little victory.

“We can only go up from here. We’ll have other battles to fight. Just different ones.” He extends a hand.

He was right- it was no longer a matter of fighting for humanhood. They had that now from those who witnessed what happened that day. Burning Rescue squad 3 had offered their bunks to them (and Galo had offered a little more to Lio which his dumb gracious butt had nearly passed down to be with him and Meis instead) while they worked with them in the clean up to help them back on their feet, even if it would take a little...cultural adjustment.

It was fighting for innocence from those who hadn’t that was the hard part. Integration back into a world who had shunned them so violently. Unfortunately it was going to take a little more than ousting the truth of their idol’s genocidal tendencies to turn them to their side, because of course it was. Nothing happens rationally. He had been filled to the brim with an alien that stole his youth from him for the past decade. He didn’t want to be told about rationality.

However, he wasn’t opposed to the idea that it was suddenly rational that things _could_ work out for them. 

He took his leader’s hand and squeezed with everything he had, and more, and more.

_*_*_*_*_

“Gueira, the light of my life, the apple to my eye, my angel. Go the fuck to sleep.”

“There’s not alot of room, you poopyhead.” Meis groaned in the pitch black.

“Then go to your _own bunk_ , Gueira.”

“...But I wanna sleep with you.”

Mei’s breath evened out in compliance as Gueira felt him grab the bridge of his nose.

“Come on then. I’m your mattress I guess, your highness.”

Gueira snickers, climbing to lie flat onto his boyfriend, his nose mere centimeters from the dark haired man in front of him.  
“Don’t be so loud either, you’ll wake the night shifters. The common room is literally right there and Puguna has ears like a fucking hawk.”

“Hmm,” he hums, pressing his face into his neck. “Boss and Galo have been louder, and they weren’t so tame about it either.”

Meis moved his hand to lie at the tanned skin at the base of the redhead’s back, slipped under his blue nightshirt.

“We can call him Lio, now, Gueira… And you’re right. They’re kind of shameful, huh?”

“It’s fucking hilarious,” he gawked as they cackled like hyenas, all regard thrown to the wind.

They lay quiet then, ghosting their fingers over every inch of their respective lover’s skin, drinking in the idea of each other's presence.

“I can’t wait to see your tattoo again,” Gueira whispered. “I miss it.”

Meis paused a moment, eyes flickering to the missing piece once etched into his skin.

“I miss my arm, but, hey. That tattoo needed retouching anyway.”

“Meis,” Gueira retorted coldly.

“I’m joking, baby, relax,” he chuckled, smoothing his hair down. 

“It’s a pretty okay sacrifice after all that’s happened.”

“It didn’t have to happen…”

“Hey, what do I keep saying? Alot didn’t have to happen, Gueira. And you know what? We came out of it alot fucking better than we thought we would. We got put through the ringer and we still ended up with everything and more. Now we have people that love us. And I love you, and if I have nothing else to thank, it’s this for giving you to me.. So shit happens for a reason.” He pressed his lips to his forehead, brushing the red locks from his eyes. “I’m not going to sit here and beg for things to have gone better in the past when I have everything I need right now. We're allowed to be sad. I'm super fucking pissed off. But not enough for it to make me forget where I am... Who I am now.”

He nodded against his chest, kissing his pectoral lightly. 

“It’s good to be alive, at the end of it all. Isn’t it?”

He raised his eyes to the closed in ceiling above them, shielding them from the dangers the outdoors undoubtedly held and lowered them to the blanket holding them dear and safe, promising a day ahead not unlike the night falling around them. 

“Yeah. I guess it is.”


End file.
